Good Beer, Cheap Happy Hour

Prominent among the dive bar drinkeries in Paris’ rue des Cannettes is the brewpub O’Neills. On the outside, it looks like your standard European Irish Pub, but in this case looks are deceiving. Come to the inside, and rather than goofy Celtic-themed knick-knacks and the obligatory “Guinness is good for you” posters you’ll get an uncomplicated series of small dining room around a bar, decorated in little else than their copper brew-tanks (on a good day, the bar area will smell like malt). Sit down at the bar, and choose from five basic beer types brewed on site: Amber and Brown ales, Belgian Abbey Style Ale and Belgian Blonde together with a standard Lager/Pilsner. You may even have the choice of a seasonal brew, but I’ve never had the pleasure. The beer is good, and I especially appreciated the Belgian Blonde on a hot summer day. The Brown Ale leaved a little to be desired, but Amber hit the spot, and it’s hard to mess up a Pilsner brewed on site.

If you’re looking for glamorous Paris, this is not it; there is no outdoor seating, and bar stools on the inside are a little sandwiched together. O’Neill’s seems decidedly grungy, and relatively empty at the beginning of happy hour. On the other hand, an empty bar with bi-lingual bartenders and pints beginning priced at 3 euros is a very good way to do a little work on your French. The pace picks up a little at around 8pm at the beginning of the restaurant’s high volume time and service is a little harder to come by. The crowd at O’Neill’s is certainly post-university age, so if you’re looking for a more happening scene, just move two doors down the rue des Cannettes.

O'Neill's Paris

Vacations!

One thing on my mind today: vacation. For those of you who don’t know, the French really like their vacations. The school year is about as long as the American school year, but it’s split up by two week vacations at least four times during the school year, as opposed to twice in the American school year. Add to that the slew of days off due to national holidays, strikes (been four so far this school year) or the field trip to London that I chaperoned for a week, it would be safe to say that teachers have it a little better than they do back home.

So then my mind naturally turned to the question of whether I deserve a vacation...after all, my last vacation just ended a little over a month ago. I only technically work 12 hours per week, and I say technically because I’ve been averaging about 6 hours per week for the past month. Yep, you heard correctly. There were the hours when teachers decided not to send me students for whatever reason, there was the national strike that cancelled all four hours last Wednesday, there’s the class that comes to me on a volunteer basis (surprisingly enough, nobody has volunteered to come for the past two weeks), there were the classes that got caught up in the confusion of my recent schedule change, there were the seniors who had the week off to prepare their competitive exams, and there was one class period that I decided not to go to, because I don’t like them.

So in other words, I’ve logged the equivalent of one full-time week over the past six weeks, and for that I am rewarded with a two-week vacation. Don’t you love France?

Parislytic

Went to The Frog and British Library yesterday to unwind after a long day at the library, and had a pint of their Parislytic. It's billed as a malty, hoppy English amber ale with a 5.2% alcohol content (I think they could work on their marketing a little). Frankly, I get the malty part, but the world hop shortage must still be taking its toll on craft beer producers in Europe because their "hoppiest" beer was anything but. It's one of my bi disappointments about beer in Paris, and honestly, most beer across Europe. Nobody has discovered quite the way the Americans have how sexy a strongly hopped amber or IPA can be for your palate. But then again, just as in most things, Americans have a capacity to innovate and break with tradition where Europeans still fear to treat. The tradition of craft beer in this part of the world is hundreds, even thousands of years old (although in the 18th century, the French were still throwing animal fat into their beers) so the process is by now ingrained. Regrettably in some cases.

French Beer

France isn't usually thought of as a beer-drinking or beer-producing country, which is why it surprised me greatly to see so many French speaking people drinking beer in their outdoor cafés and brasseries. Despite France's reputation, beer is indeed a staple drink as in other European countries, and the only reason we don't think about it is because France doesn't export a whole lotta good beer. Sure, you can get Kronenbourg in the US and England, but it's not really good beer. So where can you find good beer in France? Take a look at this article from The Beer Expert UK discussing French beers, from which I will quote the first paragraph:

"Although France is better known for its wine and food products, it also has some really good beer. Although the beer industry went through a massive decline during the first part of the 20th Century, over the last thirty years or so it has come to life again, and many young people in France drink beer more often than wine or spirits. The region known as the Nord-Pas de Calais is where French beer is at its most popular, mainly due to its proximity to Belgium. In fact, most of the best French beers are similar to their Belgian counterparts in terms of style and taste..."

A Quick Guide to Beer Lover's Paris

Check out this quick guide to beer hotspots in Paris! Very informative...

The Beer Advocate - Paris

Check out this informative website about beer in Paris. It's not thorough, nor is it updated very regularly, but it does have a few good links to some brewpubs and bars worth checking out if you find yourself thirsty for a pint while on holiday in Paris.

Happy Hour in Paris

It's Catching On

Microbrews in Paris

A friend of mine just recommended a shop in Paris (near les Halles) that sells French artisinal beers (Thanks K!). Check out the "Cave à Bulles" for a very large selection of French microbrews (who woulda thunk it)?

Hoegaarden

A weissbier, a whitebeer, a bière blanche, even a Hefeweizen would sound good attached to a bottle of Hoegaarden. It's really quite a lovely beer, and one that I first fell into on the Mediterranean coast.

Nostalgia's a funny thing...for me it was less about who I was with and what I was doing, more like where I was and what I was tasting. A Belgian beer on the Mediterranean coast might not seem logical, but I accidentally ordered a Hoegaarden at a café overlooking Nice's Marché des Fleurs. The lemon that was wedged into this white, wheat beer's tall glass made the sweet taste of summer wheat as delicious as lemonade used to be when you were young. But as an adult, you might be looking for something more complex. I regret to say that Hoegaarden isn't terribly complex as far as wheat beers go...you might compare it to Widmer with a little more subtlety. But what I like about it is its ability to transport me to a place I used to know, and a time I used to live.

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The Frog and British Library

For the hangers-out at the BNF François Mitterand, this pub is very noticeable because you will pass it every day on your way from the Métro to the library (corner of Tolbiac and Avenue France). While most would agree that this pub is in a terribly un-Parisian neighborhood (tall, glass buildings recently built over dockyards and train tracks), the beer here is quite nice. Most of the beers are in an English or German style, but there names are a collection of jeu de mots, or play on words. InSeine (insane + Seine) is by far my favorite of the group. It’s a lightly hopped English amber ale with a mild, smooth introduction and a relatively malty finish. I have to admit, coming from California where hops and explosive flavors were the thing, I wasn’t quite used to the more mild and subtle taste of the classic English bitter (in the same way it takes getting used to the difference between Californian and French wines). However, the toned-down flavors do allow you to appreciate to quality of the malt and presence of grain rather than the overwhelming sense of sugars that come in the Californian variety.

The atmosphere is alright...you have the option of sitting out on the sidewalk, and even in the coldest of Parisian winter days there are people huddled outside enjoying a beer and a cigarette. On the inside, it’s a cross between a Starbucks, a French Brasserie, an English Pub and an American Sports Bar. Go figure that one out...They do offer a good selection of Football (Futbol, that is), Rugby and American Football games on big screens but if you’re not interested, you can settle into one of their armchairs and chat with your friends or read alone. The beers are a little expensive, to be sure, but their Happy Hour price of five euros/pint is worth the trip in a city where that’s about as cheap as you’ll find.


http://www.frogpubs.com/

Brewpubs in Paris? Say it's so...

As some of you may know, I’m currently out of the US on a research trip to Paris, France. The old stereotype about French beers and French beer drinkers are largely true, in that both of them suck. Seriously, so many people drink beer in Paris cafés, but they’ll take their little half-pints of Kronenbourg (the French equivalent of Budweiser) or Panaché, and nurse it for about an hour-and-a-half, at which point they’re happy to pay their three euros and leave. My father once told me, as a rule of thumb, that he never drank beers that came from the French parts of France...if they come from Alsace, Lorraine, or French Flanders than fine, but anything else is sacrilege. I couldn’t agree more.

Or, should I say, I couldn’t have agreed more. If you’re looking for a good French beer in the grocery stores, you’re out of luck. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to move beyond the grocery stores and the traditional French café/brasserie, you might be pleasantly surprised to find that the Microbrew revolution has finally made its amphibious assault on the shores of France.

It used to be that tourists who were looking for a good beer had to go to the numerous English/Irish pubs across town. My favorite was the Bombardier, Place du Panthéon in the 5th arondissement. It was always nice to get a hand-pumped bitter and sit outside on the terrace in front of the Pantheon and the St. Etienne-du-Mont (in itself a wild mixture of weird 16th and 18th century French architecture), but the 8 euro asking price sorta turned me off. Even the relative bargain of 5 euros during happy hour seems steep considering that some British pubs have lowered the price of a Pint to 99p (with the exchange rate being what it is for foreigners, that’s about 1.10 euro or $1.35). So my appetite for fresher, better and cheaper beer was tickled, and what will follow in the next few days is a critical analysis of some of the better brewpubs that I have run into here in the City of Lights.

Is it time to rediscover Heineken?

Before the craft-brew craze hit the United States (I’m relatively young, but I can still remember those days) Heineken was one of the only escapes open to the discerning beer drinker in the United States. It isn’t even that good, really, but it was something about the green bottle that screamed exotic and kept bringing people back to its green-bottle counterparts St. Pauli Girl and Beck’s. Fortunately we’re no longer subject to the tyranny of the green bottle, as the mico-brew revolution has ushered in the age of the brown bottle democracy; it remains to be seen how destructive the Civil War between West Coast and East Coast Brewers might be for American Beer History.

Back to the point...in Europe it’s much easier and much less expensive (relatively speaking) to get your hands on the old world’s equivalent to MGD, to I recently set out to re-evaluate my relationship with the old guard beer aristocracy. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t quite as mediocre as I remember, and there’s a lot to be said about an appreciation for Pilsner style lagers that have mostly been left behind by today’s craft brewers. It had a good introduction, lacked bitterness, and was surprisingly smooth going down. It doesn’t quite hit the spot the way Czech Pilsner’s like Urquel or Budveis do, but it’s highly preferable to its Dutch counterpart Amstel or the French mockery of Pilsner style beers like Kronenbourg or 1664 (not to mention the American macro-brewed lagers). So the next time you have a craving for an old worldly beer, give your old tyrannical master a second chance!

What's New in Beer?

Norman Miller has an excellent article previewing 2009 from the beer-lover's perspective:
http://www.heraldnews.com/entertainment/x512379652/Take-a-sneak-peek-into-09

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